The expression of disbelief dominates the faces of the people. Fernando Camarena had completed the exercise and was back at his desk on the 22nd floor of an office building on Paseo de la Reforma when the alarm sounded again. Around 1:00 p.m., a 7.7-magnitude earthquake was warned to have its epicenter on the coast of Michoacán state, with aftershocks being felt in the center of the country. No damage has been reported in the capital so far, said Mexico City’s head of government, Claudia Sheinbaum. Authorities have reported one death in Manzanillo, Colima state.
“You never expect something like this to happen on the same day and at the same time,” says Camarena. It refers to the 2017 earthquake that killed 370 people, on the exact same day that the drill was held to commemorate the 1985 earthquake, which is estimated to have killed between 3,000 and 20,000 people. Hence the disbelieving look of some. At work, he and his colleagues went back downstairs, remaining as calm as possible, between the laughter of chance and the nerves of an earthquake that shook the building.
“Don’t be afraid,” a little boy said to his girlfriend as he hugged her tightly. Another boy, Gabriel, smiles nervously when asked how the earthquake affected him. He says they were just getting back to work when they heard the alarm again. He got very nervous. “I couldn’t believe it, people were between surprised and nervous and we turned around and went back down. This day is cursed!” exclaimed Gabriel.
On the street, under the tents, the toilets relieved those who felt this trembling, barely felt beyond the trembling of the street lamps and the swinging of the lamps, of another, much worse, that of 2017. On September 19, the post-exercise tremor left 369 dead and a devastated city, mostly in the neighborhoods built around the ancient lake: Roma, Condesa, Centro and Doctores.
At the In Tlilli bookstore, in the Roma Norte neighborhood, Rosa García lived through the earthquakes of 1985 and 2017. The shelves of her antiquarian bookshop are linked together with rusty iron to prevent the tremors from sweeping the books away from the floor. “It was just like 2017, except this year the alarm didn’t go off,” says García. She says she’s already used to earthquakes, but what she can’t get used to is the siren that sounds an alarm when a new one is coming. “You don’t get used to it! It’s a lot scarier than the earthquake itself,” he laments.
Do you think the date should be changed?
– Well, maybe yes, because you can’t live like that.
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